The waiting game continues for crypto traders after Bitcoin (BTC) is once again pinned below resistance at $44,00 and awaiting some spark in momentum that can sustain a rally back to the $50,000 range. The price of Bitcoin has traded in a range between $41,500 and $44,500 over the past couple of days and with tensions between Ukraine and Russia escalating, many traders are less than optimistic about Bitcoin’s short-term prospects.

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Buyers would need to make a significant move over $44,500 to reverse the price decline that has occurred from the November top of approximately $69,000. Brief rallies have been limited below resistance levels in recent months, indicating that sellers have been in charge.

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However, bitcoin may experience more gains in the short term, especially given the relative strength index (RSI) is not overbought on the daily chart. The next level of resistance is around $45,000, which may put a halt to the current advance.

Bitcoin fear and greed index on Wednesday, February 16, 2022, went from the fear level of 46 to the neutral level of 51 as per the alternative. me. The Fear and Greed index is a technique for assessing investors’ emotions toward the market.

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Bitcoin is currently trading around $44,052.30, up 1.01%. In the last 24 hours, the highest it touched was $44,667.22 and the lowest was $43,562.62. Bitcoin has a current market cap of $835,054,472,711. It has a circulating supply of 18,959,687.00 BTC coins and a maximum supply of 21,000,000 coins.

JPMorgan becomes the first major bank to enter the Metaverse

The largest bank in the US, JPMorgan, has taken a massive step into the Metaverse, opening a virtual lounge in the popular blockchain-based world Decentraland after it labelled the sector as a $1 trillion opportunity. Visitors to the lounge, situated in Decentraland’s Metajuku mall, are greeted by a roaming tiger and a digital portrait of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan. If players walk upstairs, they can watch an executive’s presentation on the economics of cryptocurrency. The “onyx lounge”, named after JPMorgan’s in-house blockchain payments system was unveiled alongside a report from the bank, detailing the types of business opportunities companies can expect to find in the Metaverse. The report states: ”The Metaverse will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over $1 trillion in yearly revenues”, while also highlighting that $54 billion is already being spent on virtual goods each year—twice the amount spent buying music.

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NYSE steps into NFTs, cryptocurrencies market

The New York Stock Exchange is stepping into the nonfungible token’s market with plans to do for digital assets what it does for stocks. The NYSE said in a regulatory filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office that it wants to be a financial exchange for cryptocurrencies and NFTs that would compete with the likes of OpenSea and Rarible Inc. The filing, dated Feb. 10, indicated plans for an NYSE-branded cryptocurrency and a marketplace to buy, sell and trade NFTs. In a statement, the NYSE said it has no immediate plans to launch cryptocurrency or NFT trading but “regularly considers new products and their impact on our trademarks and protects our intellectual property rights accordingly.”